From award-winning poet Saeed Jones,How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power.
โPeople donโt just happen,โ writes Saeed Jones. โWe sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The โIโ it seems doesnโt exist until we are able to say, โI am no longer yours.โ โ
Haunted and haunting, Jonesโs memoir tells the story of a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescenceโinto tumultuous relationships with his mother and grandmother, into passing flings with lovers, friends and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one anotherโand to one anotherโas we fight to become ourselves.
Blending poetry and prose, Jones has developed a style that is equal parts sensual, beautiful, and powerfulโa voice thatโs by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one of a kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.